Sunday, September 9, 2007

Candidates for Illini Assistant Coaching Job

If I had to guess tonight who the leading candidate is for the open assistant position, it would be Jerrance Howard. While Jerrance is a good guy who played a little (and I mean little) basketball for Illinois, his credentials seem weak, so I hope I am wrong about this. Jerrance has little experience at the college level, has no experience at recruiting, and probably has limited ability to recruit the Chicago area right now.

Robert Smith, the head coach of Simeon High School is publicly expressing interest in the job, but is having trouble getting an audience with Weber. To me, this means he is not being considered, and he is off the list. But what little I know about Smith (great high school coach, from the Public League, huge supporter of Illinois, etc.) makes me think he SHOULD be considered by Weber.

Other people mentioned include Dennis Gates, Billy Garrett, Gene Cross and Dickey Simpkins. Rather than spend time discussing these rumored candidates, I will try to wait for the announcement.

4 comments:

Legal Pub said...

Finally some good new topics.

Not sure who is really interested in the job. It probably does not pay well and certainly at Illinois, basketball recruiting must be done by the books. I think maybe Gene Keady is looking for something to do...

Ron said...

Hey legalpubmeister,

I was thinking about Gene, I really was, but it seems almost as ridiculous as the people talking about MJ, Gill, Bardo, Battle, etc. so I did not mention it.

I do think Robert Smith is interested in the job, or he is really pullling one on the Sun-Times, isn't he?

Legal Pub said...

We both know it has to be someone loyal. It has to be someone who bleeds orange and blue. It has to be ------- ------. (Hope I spelled that right!)

Ron said...

Jerrance Howard, but Jerrance has two "r"s not one.